Living in Yishun
Musings on a week’s stay in this typical Singaporean town
(This is a compilation of five articles I have written in 2013 describing my experience while living in Yishun, Singapore for a week. It pretty much explains why Singapore is different (from Cebu, Philippines at least) and has succeeded a lot in terms of urban housing and inclusive mobility where others have not)
Yishun (Part 1)
— published January 21, 2013 in the The Freeman, Cebu City Philippines
We often hear people ask, “why can’t we be like Singapore?” I simply don’t know whether they do it in aspiration or exasperation, considering the general conditions we are in. Most, if not all of us, in Southeast Asia feel the same, dreaming in awe of our small city-state neighbour. Maybe Tokyo and Hong Kong can boast of similar status, but all will agree this island has gone a long way from its undeveloped status when it became independent in 1965.
I was in Singapore last week, but this time I didn’t stay in the usual glittering sites even some Singaporeans call as “artificial,” for lack of a better word. There’s nothing artificial about the country, but it’s just that what you see is what they want you to see, as most of us do in our own cities when we entice tourists to visit — shopping malls, conventions centers, the Marina Bay Sands, reaching up to the sky, screaming “we can do it!,” the efficient MRT and the traffic which does get congested at times but leaves the rest of us envious of its efficiency.
What we do not see is actually what matters, for it is in their daily lives that I realize how effective the city-state really is — as precise and efficient as it is simple, spartan, but livable. Oh, our official meetings were still held at the sleek buildings across the Sands, but each afternoon, I joined the throng going home — 15 km. direct distance north, 13 stations away, and 40 minutes at 5 pm peak hour. Having the sunset after 7 pm provides enough time to explore the town, but the 7 am sunrise is a headache for us who wake up to a bright 6 am daylight. I was in a place where no tourist visits, except maybe for a few who lost their way.
I stayed with a family who, unfortunately, didn’t want me to state their names here but to whom I am forever grateful for gracefully allowing me to see the real Singapore from the inside. They have two sons. The elder is in the National Service (NS) — the compulsory conscription in their armed forces for all male Singaporean citizens and non-first-generation permanent residents who have reached the age of 18; the younger is in high school. The couple, both civil engineers, work in different construction companies.
“Neal” works on a project of the Housing Development Board (HDB), the agency which transformed the country’s utter lack of housing in the past to one of the best in the world. They may be light-years ahead of us, but all over the city, construction of housing flats continue to dot the skyline. They never stop building, as they never stop improving. Neal pointed out to me the early 1970–80 designs of housing blocks and the present day models. If there are three fields prominent in Singapore, it’s their housing sector, transportation, and urban environmental management — all ingredients of a livable and sustainable city.
Most people know that, but what is significant from my point of view is how they do it. I have picked up good information during my visits to the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) in the past, but seeing it firsthand disarmed me. Everything is by grand design, and the execution is determined, surgical, and persistent — to a level you’d be surprised. Where I stayed is the epitome of what Singapore’s housing development is, and it’s called “Yishun.”
Yishun is a suburban residential town. Google can give you all information you want about it. In our next two or three write-ups, allow me to describe how this township, as many others, provide a place to live for families, my friends “Neal” and “Joyce” included, in a manner which is both sustainable and livable. And by the way, before I forget, Neal and Joyce are Filipinos, Cebuanos actually, my schoolmates at CIT sometime in the distant past. They have long since made Singapore their home and country of citizenship.
Yishun (Part 2)
— published February 03, 2013 in the The Freeman, Cebu City Philippines
A good friend from UP-Diliman, Dr. Regin Regidor, commented on last Sunday’s piece, “Lived in Sg for a while and the HDBs really make sense when related to commuting.” He was referring to the Housing Development Board of Singapore, the one agency which transformed the city-state’s utter lack of housing when it gained independence in 1965 to the icon it is now. With a doctorate in transportation, Doc Regin, as we fondly call him, was former Director of the UP-National Center for Transportation Studies. He knows what he’s talking about.
Two things we immediately deduce from Doc Regin’s short statement: 1) that it “makes sense,” and 2) that it “makes sense” when related to “commuting.” In fact, Yishun seems to be the perfect example of what we expounded in two columns we wrote last December 2011 about Land Use and Transport. Not just Yishun but the rest of Singapore. It’s as if everything seem to fall in place. Only that they don’t “fall in place,” they were deliberately planned. Yishun is actually the 2,108-hectare Yishun Planning Area under the 1996 Land Use and Urban Design Planning of Singapore. They planned Yishun more than 15 years ago.
How does it really differ and why is it unique? Let’s look at the stats first. The Yishun Planning Area is 2,108 hectares, with a population in 2000 of 176,000 residents. In comparison, Lapu-lapu City is 5,810 has. with 350,000 in 2010, or about twice that of Yishun in area and population. Both are approximately 15 km. from the metropolitan center. But that is where the similarities end. Lapu-lapu is a highly urbanized city on its own, with all the functions a city wants to have while Yishun is a residential suburban town, although it looks more citylike than most cities here. Not to mention more modern and sophisticated.
Yishun IS a residential town/city. It has nine neighborhoods and each is composed of clusters of housing blocks (Doc Reg calls them HDBs). My friends, the couple “Neal” and “Joyce” work in different construction firms which makes these HDBs all over Singapore. A typical block, like the one where they live and where I stayed for a week, has 12 floors and 111 units, that is, 10 per floor, but the ground floor has a common public area. Each unit has 3 bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen/dining area. And everything is clean and orderly.
There are hundreds and thousands of these HDBs all over Singapore, clustered mostly in suburban centers. Mostly of similar design, they differ only on size and number of bedrooms, as there are blocks of only two bedrooms and some with only one (studio type, for singles). You can’t just buy any type; it all depends on your level of family income. When you increase your family income, you may be entitled to buy a bigger unit but you have to sell the old one. In Singapore, a family can only own one housing unit. You cannot have more than one.
So Yishun has all these housing blocks, but beautifully laid out in an orderly and efficient manner. Plus, it has shopping/commercial areas, medical facilities, country clubs, community centres, parks, gardens and other recreational facilities, 11 primary schools, 9 secondary schools, and a junior college. It has an industrial park, too which offer some employment opportunities, although most residents work somewhere else. In other words, it’s a place one can live and enjoy life without having to go to other places for anything else, except work. Regular bus services run through the city starting and terminating in either Khatib or Yishun MRT stations. Or you can simply just bike around too.
The main shopping mall is right across Yishun MRT Station, which is, undeniably, convenient. But smaller commercial/dining outlets are clustered conveniently among the clustered housing blocks, too, which make it also, convenient. In fact, it seems I have not yet seen anything which is inconvenient in Singapore. I thought, maybe a foot spa which proliferates here in Cebu, But I found one at the 4th floor of Northpoint Shopping Center across Yishun Station. Only it’s a bit expensive …
Yishun (Part 3) — published February 07, 2013 in the The Freeman, Cebu City Philippines
The direct and intimate inter-relationship between the land use regime and the transport infrastructure development of an urban area has long been established and aspired, for by practitioners of both disciplines. As we have laid out in scenarios and examples in previous write-ups, land use defines transport, and vice versa, in a chicken-and-egg situation. In the case of Singapore, they apparently found the correct formula as exemplified by Yishun. In the case of the Philippines, it’s still the light at the end of the tunnel, though we still don’t know how long the tunnel is.
Yishun is a residential area. It’s a suburban town, more like a city than a town by our standards, but planned and built for people to live. It’s what is traditionally known in planning circles as a “bedroom town,” but this term is seldom publicly used because most cities, especially in the Philippines, don’t want to be called as such. Many areas in our country are actually bedroom cities and towns, seldom acknowledged as such, but they are just the same. The difference in Singapore is that their residential areas are self-contained.
The Housing Development Board (HDB) builds these housing blocks, comprising of a hundred family dwelling units or more, and clustered into neighborhoods. There are usually enough commercial stores and dining facilities to serve a cluster or an entire neighborhood. As we wrote last Sunday, Yishun also have medical facilities, community centres, parks recreational facilities, and educational facilities to serve their needs. Buses serve the entire area, which feeds into an MRT station or two, to connect to the rest of Singapore.
The key to making the daily transport of people more efficient is to recognize that the bulk of the demand is home-to-work trips (includes home-to-school, too), and to promote the modal shift public transport, train-based or bus-based). Coupled with that, naturally, is to depress the propensity to use cars for home-to-work trips. Singapore does that in two ways — first, by placing a premium on car ownership, and second, discouraging car use. Through policy, not everybody can buy cars in Singapore. Every year, the government sets the number of cars to be sold, then issues Certificate of Eligibilities (COE’s) at a price, dictated by competitive means. For many years now, the COE costs more than the cost of the car you’re buying! Car ownership — the number of cars at any given time, is always regulated.
Then, the use of your overpriced car is curtailed by the famous ERP, or electronic road pricing. There is a price for using certain roads on certain times of the day, in a form of a toll, but which is paid electronically. Logically, the central business district (CBD), and the main highways and expressways cost more, and much more so during the peak hours in the morning and afternoon/evening. In brief, it means you are discouraged to use your cars in going to work each day. The very efficient public transport is always there.
All in all, both land use and transport are built together, simultaneously, and integrally, in one seamless long term plan. Public transport is prioritized over private trips, car ownership and car use is regulated, and person-trips are flattened over the day instead of being allowed to peak. Even schoolchildren’s schedules are arranged “off-peak,” such that they won’t compete with the throng of daily 8-to-5 workers and add to the hourly demand. Oh yes, you can still use your car, but mostly for non-home-to-work trips and preferably on off-peak hours.
Which makes life in Yishun something to envy. You can make it to work on time, even if work is kilometers away, and return home with more time for family. There’s no traffic jam to speak of, almost everything is available within the city — school, hospital, parks, and shopping. In fact, I saw a few items cheaper there compared to downtown. It’s a town or city one can truly say as livable, peaceful and serene, where one can live a full life and raise a family.
How did they do these? I think the correct policies and the right government institutions are a few of the keys.
Yishun (Part 4)
— published February 10, 2013 in the The Freeman, Cebu City Philippines
Last Thursday, we tried to look deeper on what makes Yishun tick; and on a wider view, why Singapore’s housing development seems to be one which everyone, especially in Southeast Asia, looks up to as a benchmark. And I ended up saying I think the correct policies and the right government institutions are a few of the key factors to this success. We already cited the role of the Housing Development Board (HDB), to a point where the flats that they make, manage, sell, or rent are simply called HDBs. But there are other agencies, too.
In its website, HDB simply said that it “plans and develops public housing towns that provide Singaporeans with quality homes and living environments.” But what I find striking, and meaningful, is its focus on “communities.” The website says, “Living environments are provided with community spaces for residents to mingle and interact. Public housing policies and schemes are formulated not only to meet changing needs and aspirations, but they also support national objectives such as maintaining racial harmony and stronger family ties, and focus on the needs of elderly and those who may be in financial difficulty.”
And you can see this in the way they plan the HDBs, the clusters, and the neighbourhoods. They’re not only constructing housing units, they are shaping communities. Even the way they accept applicants to these HDB blocks follows certain policies and procedures aimed at creating harmony. It’s not open to anybody, “first-come-first-serve basis;” there are procedures aimed at achieving other social needs and priorities and ensure inclusiveness.
On the other hand, on the transport side, the Land Transport Authority (LTA), “aims is to place our users — motorists and public transport commuters — at the heart of our transport system.” Sure, there are grumblings on the excessive cost of cars (more than twice it normally is), and the expensive toll fess (electronic road pricing, or ERP), but people are resigned to the reality that these are meant to improve the transport of people. And they have an efficient public transportation system (MRT/bus systems) to take the slack. So people arrive on time.
But as a practitioner, the agency I admire most is the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Singapore’s national land use planning and conservation authority. URA’s mission is “to make Singapore a great city to live, work and play in,” striving to create a vibrant and sustainable city of distinction. The URA has successfully transformed Singapore into one of the most liveable cities in Asia. This they did by adopting a long term and comprehensive planning approach, balancing both economic growth and a quality living environment.
At a little over 700 sq. km., this is a real challenge. Compared to them, if we speak of land available for urban use, we are rich! Maybe the relative abundance of land is a disincentive — we don’t have the compulsion to make the best use of land. URA had been successful in its task through timely and decisive policies in multiple land ownership and relaxing floor area ratios (FAR), which allows HDB to build those flats effectively which has plenty of communal space. In brief, URA establishes the long term, integrated and comprehensive plans, executes the plan through the different agencies of government, HDB and LTA included, through a detailed and systematic procedure of plan implementation.
As in any discussion on land and physical resources, the tension between private rights and public good remains (we discussed this in detail in January of last year). In Singapore, it leans heavily towards the common good and private rights take the back seat. You can’t buy empty land in Singapore, you can’t own more than one residential unit, and you share the ownership of the land upon which your flat is built on. But everyone gets the chance to own or rent a dwelling unit, and the city is shaped in a decisive way like clay on a potter’s wheel.
Yishun (Part 5)
— published February 14, 2013 in the The Freeman, Cebu City Philippines
I painted quite a perfect picture of Yishun in the last 4 instalments. Maybe enough to make people wish they could uproot themselves and transfer there without nary a thought. I hope not — I don’t want to be blamed if you do that and find out it’s not as perfect as I described. Singapore has its good aspects and bad ones. From the point of view of community and city planning, it is par excellence. But it has its downsides, too.
I wish not to examine the other side of the coin, since it is mostly behavioral, social, and cultural in nature, and coming out as side effects of trying to be excellent and advanced. Other countries are experiencing similar dilemmas — the empty churches of Europe, and mainland Chinese not comprehending the concept of “uncle/aunt” due to the one-child policy. If Japan’s population growth rate continues, there wouldn’t be any Japanese left in year 3000.
A Freeman reader, @kentjohn commented on our second instalment about Singapore’s housing program, “Sir, the problem in Singapore with regards to housing/condo rules is that you cannot inherit the unit to your son and daughter, it will return to government, not to your family when you die…” That is true, but then again, we think it’s a problem simply because we are used to our own laws of passing on property to our children. In many other countries, the concept of land ownership is stewardship — the State owns all the land and all of us are simply “renting” it or paying for the use. This is the British concept of real property.
But then again, if the government ensures that everybody has access to housing, why is there a need to pass on your house to your children? You see, if we follow that trend of thought, we would arrive at where we are in the Philippines where there is that insurmountable divide between the rich and the poor. Those born to rich families will easily inherit mansions, and the means to make more millions, since he/she doesn’t have to think about buying a house in the first place; the homeless will bear children who are as homeless as they are, if not more.
Singapore’s per capita income is 15 times ours, but each citizen will have to strive to earn more to “buy” a flat; they will pay a third of their salary for childcare and day-care, which probably is why they are not bearing children anymore, to the consternation of the state who is trying its best to encourage people to make babies — they even give hefty benefits if a couple can make more, short of paying for second honeymoons. In fact I think they do!
In Japan, you return half of your fortune to the government when you die — the inheritance tax is highway robbery. Its per capita income is 8.5 times that of ours but you don’t see filthy wealth nor extreme poverty. One is tempted to ask, who is more democratic and equitable. But problems these countries have, too, no doubt about that, on different fields and different levels. But as far as structured long-term development planning is concerned, as well as efficient and inclusive transportation, they excel. That’s the message in this series.
A million thanks to my friend “Neal” and his wife “Joyce” (not their real names), now citizens of Singapore, but erstwhile friends and schoolmates at CIT, 30 odd years ago. You lent a week for me to see the real Singapore, not just on theory, but what it is, on the ground, away from where the tourists see the glitters. Yishun will always be that “ideal” in my mind, a reality in that country, but a living place to hope for in this, … where you can enjoy a good life, clean, orderly, efficient, and peaceful. Probably one of the most livable cities in the world.
